


Uncle Merlin

by platonic_boner



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 01:29:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4858040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platonic_boner/pseuds/platonic_boner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin's life after Arthur's death. (Also, Gwen has a baby.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncle Merlin

After Arthur...

After _that_ , Merlin remains standing in the lake, staring blankly towards where the boat had finally disappeared into the mist. The sun begins to set, and Merlin doesn't move. He hears someone ride out of the woods, but doesn't even turn around to check if the rider is hostile or not, because, why would it matter? Merlin has failed Arthur, and if there is a Saxon about to execute him, then maybe Merlin deserves it.

Maybe it would be a mercy.

"Merlin," says the rider, and then Percival is standing in front of him, shaking his shoulders. "Merlin! The king?"

Merlin raises his eyes - his red, teary eyes - to Percival's and Percival swallows and nods and says, "We must take word to the queen."

Merlin still doesn't move. After a moment, Percival just picks him up, carries him to shore, and sets him on the horse.

They ride for Camelot.

* * *

  
Gwen's coronation takes place the day after they bring the news. Camelot is still in danger, and it needs a strong leader to see it through.

Merlin doesn't attend. He still can't look Gwen in the eye. Not after seeing her grief when Percival told her that her husband was dead.

Gaius tells Merlin that no one blames him. If Merlin were talking to anyone, he'd tell Gaius that's a lie - Merlin very much blames himself.

* * *

  
During the month after Arthur's death, Merlin walks sleepily to Arthur's chambers at dawn to wake and dress him a total of eight times. Each time, the sight of the empty bed and untouched room shocks Merlin horribly into remembering what has happened.

He gets a similar shock every time he sees Gwen on what used to be Arthur's throne.

Sometimes he sees one of the knights from behind and something about the way he's holding a sword or how his hair is shining makes Merlin's heart leap - but without fail, when the knight turns, it is not Arthur.

Sometimes memories and grief hit him simultaneously, like when he passes the place where he and Arthur first met and hears, clear as a bell, "I could take you apart with one blow."

Arthur was right, of course. All it took was one blow - one thrust of a sword - and Merlin has fallen apart.

* * *

  
Two months after...everything, Gwen enters Gaius' workroom. She smiles at Merlin, and he tries to smile back.

"How may I help you, my lady?" Gaius asks, setting down the balm he is mixing.

"I've been feeling under the weather lately," Gwen says. "After I threw up on my maid this morning, she's insisting I make sure it isn't anything serious."

"Of course," Gaius says. "Now, may I ask..."

Merlin tunes out Gaius' diagnostic question and continues ruthlessly pounding herbs into a tincture. There are many knights and soldiers who have lingering injuries from the battle two months ago, and there have been skirmishes with the Saxons since. He and Gaius have had endless amounts of work to do. Merlin suspects Gaius is giving him the lion's share, because when Merlin is not gathering herbs or preparing poultices, he is staring into space and thinking of everything he should have done differently. Of all the ways he could have saved Arthur's life, if only he weren't such an idiot. Of course, he thinks about that when he's working, too, but then it isn't so obvious and disturbing to Gaius.

Merlin is dragged out of his thoughts by Gaius' offensively jubilant, "Congratulations, my lady!"

Merlin's breath catches in his throat as Gwen asks, "Congratulations? On vomiting, cravings, and tender, um, parts?"

"You're _pregnant_ , my lady."

Merlin shoots to his feet and stumbles into his bedroom. He isn't sure what emotions he's feeling - maybe all of them? - but he is definitely crying.

* * *

  
Nine months after her father was killed, Gwen and Arthur's daughter is born. Merlin is the third to hold the baby, after the midwife and Gwen herself. Merlin tries to focus on the tiny human being in his arms, and not on the fact that he has this privilege only because Arthur does not.

She looks nothing like Arthur, with a few patches of dark hair and Gwen's colouring and a round face - until she opens her blue, sparkling eyes.

Gwen names her Myla. Merlin is torn between emotions: joy at her birth, and devastation that Arthur will never see her, never feel her tiny hands trying to grab his face. He is also somewhat surprised that he is incredibly relieved, and has been since the midwife said, "It's a girl." He will never have to fear that Myla will die in battle like her father.

* * *

  
It takes Gwen years to change the laws against magic, though not for lack of trying. The Council fights her, claiming this is not what Arthur would have wanted.

"It is, though," Gwen insists to Merlin in private.

Merlin wishes he was as confident in that belief as Gwen.

Finally, though, Merlin is appointed Court Sorcerer. The first magic trick Merlin does for Myla (if you don't count turning stones into cushions when she fell down a flight of stairs) is to make a dragon rise out of the sparks of a fire on her second birthday.

Myla claps and says, "More! More!"

Myla grows up loving magic instead of hating and fearing it, and Merlin could not be more grateful to Gwen.

* * *

  
When Myla is of age and the Council starts muttering about appropriate marriage partners and possible alliances to be forged, Merlin cannot believe he was ever glad Arthur had a daughter. Fortunately, Gwen stands up and says, "Enough! My daughter will choose her own husband!" because otherwise Merlin would've done it and on second thought, that probably isn't his place.

A few years later, Myla marries a knight of Camelot who is a farmer's son. (They met the day Myla first picked up a sword. They were both five and she beat him into the ground with it.) Of their four children, Merlin can find traces of Arthur only in their youngest son. Prince Raoul is the best swordsman in Camelot and the neighbouring kingdoms, and when he wins a tournament, his grin is Arthur's.

* * *

  
They bury Gaius not long after Myla's wedding. The funeral is a celebration of a long life very well-lived, but for Merlin, it's still like putting his father in the ground. His grief is nowhere near as potent as it had been for Arthur's death, though, because Merlin knows it is Gaius' time.

Hunith dies a year later from a sickness developed during an extremely cold winter. Merlin is by her bedside, but there is nothing even the most powerful magic could do.

Prince Raoul falls in battle seven years after he is knighted. Merlin's heart breaks into even smaller pieces knowing that he will never see Arthur's grin again, and knowing that once again he failed to save a Pendragon he loved.

Over the years, one by one, Merlin and Gwen bury all the knights that had served Arthur. In her old age, Gwen gives up her throne to Myla. Merlin and Gwen spend much of the next few years together, reminiscing, although Gwen remembers less and less as time passes. (Towards the end, she does not remember that Arthur is dead, and Merlin feels guilty for feeling so envious.) Much too soon, Merlin is standing in front of Gwen's pyre, watching the only other person who remembers Arthur disappearing in front of him.

* * *

  
Merlin watches Camelot's importance wane and its glory disappear. Soon, the castle is just ruins whose only visitor is an old man who walks slowly through halls that no longer exist and who stares longingly into the empty space where a tower once stood.

Merlin followed the Pendragons out of Camelot, and as the years pass, he keeps track of them all. In the early centuries after Arthur's death, they stay close by, in England. Merlin travels between them on horseback, occasionally ridding the roads of bandits when they decide to attack an old man traveling alone.

Then some get on boats, and go to the continent, or the New World, or (Merlin hopes to tease Arthur with this someday) Australia. Merlin never visits the ones who leave, because he will not go so far from England and from Arthur.

He walks by the Lake of Avalon often, waiting.

* * *

  
As time goes by, Merlin watches magic disappear from the world. He watches witches burning and knows their terror. He leaves the Pendragons' side for a few decades to save as many of his people as he can, but he is often too late to do anything but watch their ashes blow in the wind.

Then, the Pendragon children start asking what the tricks are behind their Uncle Merlin's spells. Where does he buy the fire-dragons, and how are they made? (Perhaps, Merlin tells himself, it is a Pendragon quality to never believe he has magic.)

* * *

  
Merlin tries to use his powers for good. He saves thousands from the plague (though only a tiny fraction of the total affected). He tries to curb the Fire of London, though it spreads much too quickly. He supports slave rebellions and emancipation efforts. Though he would help anyways, in the midst of all the disasters he is always looking for a blond head of hair, because he is always thinking of the promise that Arthur would be back when he was needed most.

* * *

  
Arthur's scattered descendants come back for the wars. Not all of them fight on England's side. Merlin tries to protect them all regardless, but by this point Arthur has thousands of descendants and not even Merlin can be two places at once. Every time one of Arthur's grandchildren falls in battle, Merlin's old grief surges up again.

He yells into the sky that this is not what was promised, that Arthur was supposed to be _back_ , that this is not _fair_. There is no answer, because there is no one left to answer him.

* * *

  
Merlin has lost track of the year, has lost track of what city he's in. He has been wandering for what seems like forever, but he has an unexplained but unquestionable feeling that he is about to reach his destination.

His feet have led him to a small hospital. A young boy holds the door open for him, and Merlin enters, looking around.

"Can I help you?" a receptionist asks.

Merlin says, "Pendragon?"

She gives him a room number and Merlin makes his way there. Inside is a girl, Alice Pendragon (she's a young woman, really, but Merlin gave her her first bicycle, so to him she's a girl), holding a newborn baby. She looks up, smiles, says, "Uncle Merlin!" but Merlin isn't paying attention.

He's staring at the boy in her arms, a big strong baby with tiny hands and a loud, demanding cry and a dusting of blond hairs and, most importantly, a pair of sparkling blue eyes that Merlin, even after all this time, knows instantly.

He breathes, "Arthur."


End file.
